After a minute Van Spreckdal raised his head:
"Are you the author of this sketch?" he asked, now giving me his undivided attention.
"Yes, sir."
"What are you asking for it?"
"I don't sell my sketches… It's the rough draft for a picture."
"I see," he said, lifting up the paper with the tips of his long yellow fingers. He took a magnifying glass from his waistcoat pocket and started to study the drawing in silence.
The sun's rays were, at this time of day, falling obliquely into my garret. Van Spreckdal did not breathe a word; his big nose curved into a claw, his thick eyebrows contracted, and his protruding chin created a thousand wrinkles in his long sunken cheeks. The silence was so impenetrable that I could hear quite distinctly the plaintive buzzing of a fly caught in a spider's web.
"And how big is this picture going to be, Mister Venius?" he said without even looking at me.
"Three feet by four feet."
"What will you charge for the picture?"